Teejay, South Asia's leading fabric manufacturer, has taken the lead in producing green fabric for some of their key customers. The Company who was named amongst the 2016 Forbes list of Asia's Top 200 Companies under a Billion US dollars, announced their new identity last month and the sustainability initiative is one of the long term goals under Teejay's new direction.
This green initiative is an initial step by Teejay, who wants to drive the sustainability agenda in all aspects of their business. The Company has entered into a partnership with The Carbon Consulting Company (CCC) to calculate the product carbon footprint of a selected range of their fabrics. CCC who has calculated the emissions of a selected range of Teejay's fabric has been able to completely offset the carbon emissions associated with their production through their partner, Natural Capital Partners (NCP), UKthe world's Best Offset Retailer for six years running.
For the present, Teejay has brought together one of the leading Apparel Groupsin the Island and their client UK's Marks & Spencer (M&S) to quantify, measure and offset carbon emissions associated with a garmentproduced using a CarbonNeutral® fabric from Teejay's Spring / Summer 2017 collection. Employing both local expertise and international standards, Teejay & M&S are working together to refine the calculations and aim to complete the work in time for the up and coming product lines for their spring/summer 2017 season.
Teejay has already secured through CCC, a sizable stock of carbon credits fromNCP, and this stock of credits will then be retired against the production runs of the garment.
Rodney Arland commended CCC for their support and expertise which helped them create the product sooner than expected. CCC who has a team of qualified professionals with global expertise has received several accolades for their outstanding work in the field. Their work is guided by Senior External Technical Advisor Dr.SampathWahala,from theSabaragamuwa Universitya highly reputed Environmental and Sustainability professional.
The COO Marketing for Teejay says the next phase of the project is to work more closely with M&S, to better understand and calculate the retail, distribution and consumer use and disposal phases of the garment (i.e. domestic washing and recycling patterns). Over the next months the partners will liaise closely with M&S to ensure that the balance calculations are carried out in a manner that is in linewith the brands sustainability standards. He added thatplans have already been drawn to work with a leading US retailer in the new year.
Currently Teejay is in talks with a number of top international brands who have expressed interest in the product in order to reach their long term goal of driving the green initiative across their supply chain. CCC will work with them through Teejay to calculate emissions up to the production of the garment, covering the end use state i.e. the ultimate user of the product.